This was inevitable. AdMob founder and CEO Omar Hamoui has responded to Apple blocking AdMob from the iOS ecosystem. Unsurprisingly, Hamoui isn't particularly amused, claiming that not only is it bad for competition, it will also hurt developers and users alike.

Omar Hamoui published his response on the AdMob company blog. "This change threatens to decrease - or even eliminate - revenue that helps to support tens of thousands of developers. The terms hurt both large and small developers by severely limiting their choice of how best to make money," he writes, "And because advertising funds a huge number of free and low cost apps, these terms are bad for consumers as well."

Hamoui further claims that these changes have nothing to with improving the experience for users or developers. Competition delivers the best outcome for consumers, he states, and "artificial barriers to competition hurt users and developers and, in the long run, stall technological progress".

"I've personally worked with many iPhone app developers around the world, including one who created a fun and simple game in the early days of the App Store," Hamoui recalls, "He built the app because he was interested in the challenge. He built this single app into a multi-million dollar advertising revenue stream with AdMob, hired a whole team, and turned a hobby into a real business."

This is going to get really interesting, really soon. Several US government agencies are already said to be investigating Apple for possible antitrust issues, and you can bet they will look at this particular issue too.